Successful, uptight lawyer rushes back home from the big city to her tiny hometown when a parent takes ill. There she discovers that, yes, Dorothy was right — there is no place like home.
Oh, and she also finds that the local hometown hunk/fisherman beats her successful, big-city boyfriend any day.
Yes, it���s the stuff of countless Lifetime and Hallmark movies — and you’ve seen the plot hundreds of times before.
And just when you think they’ve mercifully put that old dog to sleep, CMT steps into the fray with their version. But CMT applied a little CPR to the old tried-and-true formula and managed to bring it back to life.
Right off, you’ll know you aren’t watching Hallmark or Lifetime because, well, the small town isn’t a quaint New England fishing village. This time, it’s a small town in Alabama, although the fisherman, not to mention the fishing metaphors, still fly like fishing lures over a clear lake.
What really sets this same-old/same-old story apart from the others is that it’s got some actual laughs, and the cast is just terrific.
That smart casting begins with the unexpected choice of Burt Reynolds.
The guy is such a pro and so funny — not to mention someone you don’t expect in a CMT movie — that every time he comes on screen, you realizes how much fun you’re having.
The other great casting choice is LeAnn Rimes. She plays his daughter, Holly, a driven, young Chicago lawyer with an equally driven, status-hungry boyfriend, Carl.
The story opens as Holly is preparing for a big trial. When her dopey brother calls to say that dad had a heart attack while fishing, Holly reluctantly drops everything to head home — in the Mercedes she borrowed from her boyfriend.
Holly realizes that he cares more for the car than her when he calls 57,000 times to check up on “his baby,” and his baby ain’t her.
Then, the worst happens. To avoid hitting a bale of straw in the road, (hey, it is the country!) she swerves and — whoops — there goes the baby.
Luckily, the new guy in town (played by a drop-dead gorgeous Shawn Roberts) just happens to be the best fender and body man around — and soon she finds her way around his fender and body!
Back home, Holly finds out that her cantankerous dad had immediately checked himself out of the hospital, went right back to the lake and refuses to cooperate with his doctors.
But that’s nothing new, since Dad has never cooperated with anyone or anything in his life.
Much angsting ensues as dad insists on going fishing to catch what may, in fact, be the world’s biggest bass, while Holly’s boyfriend, smelling a rat — or, in this case, something fishy — shows up in the town at a most inopportune time.
What’s a girl to do?
As handsome hunk says about corporate boyfriend: “Smells like a fish took a crap on another fish.”
Now, for sure you’ve never heard that line on the Hallmark Channel.